Thank you, Mr. Chair.
During the summer, the provincial and territorial governments did indeed agree on a target of 5% for immigration within francophone communities. We salute the government for this renewed political will in relation to francophone immigration. However, to achieve these targets, concrete, efficient, and especially, collaborative measures, which complement each other, must be implemented and strengthened
As Sylviane Lanthier of the FCFA recently mentioned when she appeared before your committee, considerable efforts have been devoted to four areas of intervention over the past 15 years: promotion, recruitment, intake and integration.
It's clear that Canada's francophone post-secondary institutions play an important role and contribute in various ways in these areas of intervention. They do this by working closely with organizations and stakeholders at the forefront of this realm, such as the FCFA, RDÉE Canada, Colleges and Institutes Canada, or CICan.
As I mentioned in the first part of my presentation, the categories of students who attend our Canadian francophone colleges and universities obviously include students with deep Canadian francophone roots, students who have graduated from French immersion programs, immigrants, international students, and adults who are pursuing continuing education with a view to joining the labour market. In fact, the immigrant and international student categories are experiencing considerable growth. In some of our institutions, they represent up to 20% of the student clientele.
We help promote the communities to future immigrants and prospective international students by taking part in various ÉduCanada fairs organized by the federal government in selected countries. In addition, over the last few years, we've been taking part in Destination Canada, to which reference was made earlier.
We also play an important role in welcoming and integrating immigrants. I'd like to share some numbers with you on that. There are certainly many interesting programs, that are attracting clientele. All told, our 21 colleges and universities offer 900 programs. On the anglophone side, more than 16,000 programs are offered. So you can see that the offer sizes are quite different. That's why it's important to continue to develop programs, and offer other types of programs. My reference to hundreds of programs might seem to be a large number, but it's only 7% of what's being offered in English. This gives you an idea of the orders of magnitude.
For the past few years, we have also been collaborating with CICan on the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program and on Planning for Canada, to help immigrants prepare before their departure, and to facilitate their social and professional integration into the communities. To ensure a personalized professional orientation service in French, the Association looks after the delivery of this service. We offer future immigrants a central access point, and work on the preparation needed for their professional and economic orientation within Canada's francophone communities. This service helps immigrants better prepare so they can better succeed economically; it does so by providing them information, advice, planning, and online support. This way, candidates can benefit from numerous services, such as access to top-flight search and information resources, and advice on considering solutions and making good decisions for themselves and the family members who will be joining them. We give them an idea of the challenges and opportunities that await them on Canadian soil. We also offer them direct connections with our educational institutions, and with professional associations, francophone immigration networks, immigrant assistance organizations, and any other organizations that can help them.
In closing, I'd like to assure you that the Association's institutional members have succeeded in adapting to the new demolinguistic reality of French-speaking Canada, and now reflect that diversity.
As I said earlier, our student constituencies include francophones with deep roots in Canada, but also, young people from exogamous and immigrant families, immersion program graduates, international students and adults who are or have been employed, speak French as a mother tongue or second language, and are pursuing continuing education.
Therefore, an increased federal government investment in the next Official Languages Action Plan is essential. It would be used to strengthen our colleges' and universities' capacity to implement the infrastructure needed to welcome more immigrants, international students and immersion graduates who need personalized help and special support services in our institutions. In particular, collective projects of the kind we wish to carry out would become possible thanks to such an increased investment.
Thank you for your time. It will be a pleasure to answer your questions.